Mental Health Experts Call On All Political Parties To Back A 10-Year Plan

A group of mental health experts, including academics, health professionals, heads of charities and “lived experience” experts, have called on the government to reinstate the canceled 10-year mental health strategy.

This follows the release of a new All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Report on Fit and Healthy Children: The strategy of major conditions: a 10-year failure for mental health.

In a letter to be hand-delivered to 10 Downing Street on Thursday July 20, 56 mental health leaders have called on Rishi Sunak to reverse his government’s decision to scrap the 10-year mental health strategy that was scheduled to be published this year.

In 2022, the government launched a call for tests to help them produce a long-awaited 10-year strategy to tackle an alarming rise in mental illness across the UK. However, in January 2023, Health Secretary Steve Barclay, in a shock announcement to the House of Commons, declared that the 10-Year Plan would be scrapped. Instead, mental ill-health would be included in a new ‘important conditions strategy’ that would address various physical health problems, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, musculoskeletal diseases, and respiratory diseases.

This move disappointed the mental health sector, which opposed the abandonment of a much-needed strategy to improve mental health care; long considered a ‘Cinderella service’.

“I’m concerned that lumping all mental health conditions under the single umbrella of mental ill-health simply won’t get the focus and funding they urgently need.”

Says Professor Rory O’Connor from the University of Glasgow Suicide Research Laboratory. “As we continue to recover from the pandemic and weather the cost of living crisis, this is not the time to de-prioritize mental health. This is especially concerning because we know that the impact of recent years has disproportionately affected the mental health of the most vulnerable in our society. Pre-existing inequities have been further exacerbated during COVID-19, and my fear is that removing the 10-year plan for mental health to make way for the core conditions strategy is a step backwards. We are facing a national mental health crisis that requires an urgent whole-of-government approach to address the complexities and inequities in mental health.”

In February, 14 mental health charities wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak calling for a specific mental health strategy. Now this Report provides the evidence to show why this is necessary.

“Good mental health is essential for everyone in our living and working society to prosper and prosper,” says the president of the APPLICATION Steve McCabe, MP for Birmingham.

“This was the resounding message from over 5,000 individuals and organizations in response to the recent Government Public Consultation on wellbeing and we are proud to make that case in our Report.

Abandoning a ten-year mental health strategy and making mental health just one among others in a new major conditions strategy leaves people with mental illness under-staffed and under-resourced in services, and subjected to diagnoses and treatment that do not benefit from the well-funded research base that underpins many physical illnesses.

Our six-point Mental Health Plan addresses inequities and disparities in mental health service delivery; banish centuries of stigma and lay the foundation for a truly “whole person” health service.

There could be no better way to mark the 75th anniversary of our beloved NHS and a better tribute to the ambition of our 21st century UK if all its citizens, whatever their circumstances, come together with determination to make that new beginning a reality.”